05/08/2003

Peace Force Cheered In Liberia

MONROVIA, Liberia, Aug. 4 -- Nigerian commandos leapt out of white U.N. helicopters this morning at Monrovia's international airport, scampered across the tarmac in combat crouch to take up positions in the surrounding tall grass -- and were all but swallowed up by a horde of cheering Liberians ecstatic to finally see international peacekeepers in their devastated country.

"Today is a great day, a great day," said a member of the welcoming throng, Alex Kennedy, shortly before the Liberians hoisted a Nigerian colonel onto their shoulders and carried him around the area. "A very long time waiting. This is overdue, but we're glad things have come to where we can see the realization of the promises."

The 198 Nigerian soldiers, who arrived with a single armored personnel carrier, were the first element of a U.N.-sanctioned West African peace force whose ranks will eventually swell to 3,250, according to officials. The peacekeepers remained at the airport, awaiting the rest of the force before moving the remaining 30 miles to the capital, commanders said. Still, word of their arrival immediately dampened the fighting that has taken hundreds of lives in the past two weeks.

Rebels' shelling of downtown Monrovia ceased, and fighting appeared limited to sporadic bursts of small-arms fire between the rebels and the motley militia forces loyal to President Charles Taylor.

On city streets clotted with the hundreds of thousands who have fled fighting on the city's fringes, vendors produced T-shirts proclaiming "Liberia: The War is Over!" and "Thank God for ECOMIL," the acronym for the peacekeeping force, the Economic Community Mission in Liberia.

"It was different today, completely different," said one resident, Max Williams, 31. "It's a real reflection that there will be a real peace."

At one of the bridges connecting Monrovia, which is surrounded on three sides by water, with the rebel-held shore, a white flag appeared. Spokesmen for the insurgent Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy, or LURD, publicly vowed to observe a cease-fire while the peacekeepers assumed their positions.

"We're expecting them to keep their word," said Col. Theophilus Tawiah of Ghana, who headed preparations for the peacekeepers. "Everybody's hopeful. Everybody's waiting for us."

Liberians say they are still waiting for U.S. Marines, who today remained aboard ships about 100 miles off the coast; defense officials in Washington said there was still no decision on whether to send them ashore.

Tentative plans call for a small group, numbering about 100, to land and provide logistical and communications assistance to the West African troops, the officials said. But the bulk of the 2,300 Marines are likely to stay at sea.

Only two of the three ships in the amphibious force have reached the area, officials said. The USS Iwo Jima amphibious assault ship and USS Carter Hall amphibious landing dock are "doing circles in the water," said one defense official. The Marines are awaiting the arrival of the third ship, the USS Nashville transport dock, which is still a day or two away. The ships were not located in the same place when ordered to head for Liberia.

In the coming days, the ships are likely to move closer to the Liberian coast, officials said, facilitating the possible dispatch of Marines ashore and allowing the ships to be spotted from land in a show of force.

Many Liberians still expect U.S. forces to come ashore once Taylor follows President Bush's repeated insistence that he leave the country. Taylor, a former rebel leader who is under indictment by a U.N.-backed court for alleged war crimes in neighboring Sierra Leone, has vowed to step down next Monday but has waffled on actually departing Liberia.

Nigeria has offered Taylor asylum, and the country's foreign minister, Oluyemi Adeniji, arrived in an executive jet this morning at Monrovia's suddenly busy Robertsfield International Airport. Before departing for a meeting with Taylor at the president's seaside home, Adeniji said he had come to discuss "oh, just the peace process, now that the peacekeepers are here."

But sources said the main topic was whether Nigeria would allow Taylor to travel abroad if he accepted asylum there. "He doesn't want to be a prisoner in Nigeria," said a person familiar with the meeting.

Ordinary Liberians remained consumed with their own fates. War in this lush country of 3 million has claimed an estimated 100,000 lives since 1989, when Taylor launched an insurrection that ended with his 1997 election.

The LURD offensive that began in mid-July was the third in the two months since it signed the cease-fire linked to Taylor's planned departure. The rebels' attack emboldened a second guerrilla army, known as the Movement for Democracy in Liberia, to take Liberia's second-largest city, Buchanan, where government officials said fighting continued today.

The rebel gains left Taylor's government without a port and besieged civilians without access to the food stored there. As food prices leapt tenfold, growing hunger became a major concern in government-held areas already hit hard by cholera.

Relief workers hoped to open a "humanitarian corridor" across the front line on Tuesday to ferry out wounded from the rebel side and ferry in medical supplies. If successful, the corridor would lift hopes that rebels would retreat to positions outside the city that they held before launching the current offensive. It would also lift hopes that the Nigerians would be able to establish the security necessary for aid workers.

In Rome, LURD's leader said his fighters would pull out of Monrovia when peacekeepers were in place and maintaining the cease-fire, even if Taylor refuses to resign by Monday and leave the country.

"As soon as the troops are in, we will leave," said Sekou Conneh, who traveled to Rome over the weekend at the invitation of Sant'Egidio Community, a Roman Catholic charity that also has tried to intervene in Liberia's civil war and other African conflicts. "We don't want to pull back if the peacekeepers are not there and civilians get attacked by Taylor's forces. That's why we are taking our time."

Conneh said that if Taylor remained in Liberia, African peacekeepers should "take care of it."

"It's not our problem. We are going to continue the cease-fire," he said. "We don't trust Charles Taylor and we are sure he is not going to step down. It will take some force."

Nigerian commanders said they were equal to the task.

"We are conversant with the ground in Liberia," said Capt. Aliyu Jibril, leader of the first platoon to land, which occurred in a driving rainstorm. "We are the elder brother to West African countries."

Jibril said most of the men under his command had served in Nigeria's last peacekeeping tour in Liberia, which stretched from 1990 to 1998 and produced a checkered record, with abuses including arms sales by Nigerian commanders to Liberian warlords.

"I wish you God speed and well in this historic mission to Liberia," the U.N. special representative, Allan Doss, told the Nigerians as they departed Sierra Leone, where they were serving as U.N. peacekeepers following a war also linked to Taylor. "The people of Liberia have suffered a lot, for too long. They need your help."

Karl Vick